Timezone - you can install and run a computer successfully even if it is in the wrong timezone. (But please see TZ discussion above)

Additional user creation - system-config-users in available on the desktop as well as in firstboot if you want 2nd and 3rd users.

First user creation - but if you only have root, this sucks as graphical login as root is dangerous and disabled, so you're stuck with command-line tools to take care of this.

Root password - you could set the machine by default to allow only local logins and not set a password on root at all. Does not having a password on root makes the system more secure? Enable the first user as a member of wheel, and rig console kit to accept sudo passwords.

Human name of first user - it could be provided on the desktop if you didn't create the first user in firstboot. Maybe a 'first-login' mode for GDM where you're asked there.

[edit] Q: I didn't time it exactly, but I got the impression live media install was about 20 minutes, DVD a bit over an hour. Does that seem sane?

Live can be alot faster than 20 min. It mostly depends on the USB or CDROM speed.

DVD I'd expect to be about an hour, network (interactive or not) ~20m. DVD takes longer than network because optical drives are slow

If you throw updates into that it can take longer via network; DVD might actually get a little faster if you've got updates on the network (depending on pipe size though).

[edit] Q: We have network install media, jigdo, and boot.fpo - which is the best network install option?

Jigdo isn't an option. It breaks too often to depend on. Like torrent only far worse.

kickstart is kind of orthogonal to all that

the simplest is probably a boot.iso+defaults. you don't need to know a location or anything. boot.fpo is the same but smaller. I used it for one of my upgrades, worked just like boot.iso after selecting the release from the boot menu. 600k download is pretty nice.

[edit] Q: What is the difference between the check media newt thing that pops up during dvd install, and 'verifying' your media using the checksums on the website?

Verifying your media based on the checksums on the website verifies that the download was correct - it doesn't verify the media, just the download.

Check media (in stage1) tests that a) you burned the media correctly and b) that we can (linearly) read it off the disc correctly. Note that I say "(linearly)" there on purpose - that can succeed but still not be sufficient to actually do a media install :( It is linearly on the disc - but we don't necessarily read it linearly during installation and on some drives that can result in read errors because cd drives are shit.

There is also a test in syslinux, only on live - 'verify and boot.' Does that verify 'the burn' as well?

I'd be fine with removing media check if I didn't think it'd result in a flood of even more bugs. The only thing worse than media check is the bug reports we'd get without it. IIRC we removed it once for an alpha (because it was broken) and the result was lots of pain. We have to leave in media check. Its the 1st line of defense against bad drives and discs - they're still very common. Even with it we still get those bugs.

If someone submits a weird bug, you ask them to go thru media check?

Yes. Usually its fairly obvious from the kernel errors. Thinks like timeout errors on the /dev/sr0. Depends on the weird bug, too. Sometimes we ask them to do memtest ;)

Non-optional media check would annoy me greatly. I check once.

If you use rw media we could add back the secret bit into the program header to say not to check it, and then give you a utility to frob that bit ;)

Downside: rw media is worse than cd drives. (or, you know, add a command line flag to say you've already tested it and then don't tell anybody that doesn't read the code...)

[edit] Q: How much can syslinux be customized? Can the fonts be changed? The border? The welcome message?

The fonts could be changed maybe, the format is psf. The follow app can convert between ttf and psf and we could experiment to see how well they work:

[edit]Q: Why is basic video driver install a separate choice? Shouldn't it fall back if non-basic is broken?

In a lot of cases either

a) we can't tell that it didn't work in the code, only by viewing the screen, or

b) when it didn't work the machine is wedged.

That'd be nice, but that's not really something we can do. If non-basic is broken you've loaded a kms driver, unwinding from that back to text mode is not really implemented and also not really tractable -and also simply might not work.

If you want to play a game under windows, you probably don't want virt in the way. If you want to play a game under that windows instance, the virt 3d may not be fast enough.

In the context of anaconda, tthe only thing that is important to preserve is that if you install windows first and fedora second (after resizing the partition by booting live with gparted), anaconda still knows how to detect windows and configure grub to chainload it.

Many students in countries like India have too many things in college which they have to do in windows and vms don't have that power, and for gaming, ps3 or xbox is still too costly.

[edit] Q: Why does the DVD installer tell me I can't upgrade from RHEL 6 to Fedora 14? I never expected that.

If the system is upgradable, it gives you a screen with two radio buttons to choose between upgrade or install.

If your system is Fedora, but too old to upgrade, that screen is skipped and instead you're given a pop up dialog to tell you upgrade isn't possible.

The popup appears when you replace RHEL with Fedora, but it probably shouldn't since nobody expects upgradeability there.

[edit] Q: What is the UTC clock checkbox all about? What does it mean?

It's there to make dual-booting with Windows easier. (Windows boxes usually use the local time in BIOS, in Linux some people prefer UTC, though hwclock supports both, see man hwclock).